Early on a Saturday morning, people gather around a green truck full of saplings. At the farmer’s market in northwest Columbia, the Arbor Day Tree Giveaway has begun, and 1,000 young trees are up for grabs. The rain may keep the numbers of visitors lower, but I’m still there with my MoJo kit and a rain jacket.

I pulled out my iPhone and went to work collecting b-roll and interviews with people picking up trees. Normally, rain and reporting together stress me out, trying to carry an umbrella AND all that extra equipment, but with just the little kit, the weather didn’t stop me and I got to get some closer shots, as well as blend in better.

This blog post is going to be about the wonders of troubleshooting while using the Voddio app. Every single time I go out to report something new goes wrong. It seems inconvenient at the time but it’s really just training me to be a Voddio pro.

RJI has partnered with HCD Research to conduct studies that will enable advertisers and publishers to design digital advertising campaigns and news media websites that are more effective at communicating their messages to their target audiences.

A troupe of acrobats from China visited the University of Missouri’s Jesse Hall, March 22, 2012. The troupe, Golden Dragon Acrobats, wowed the audience with contortionists, human pyramids and other unbelievable acts. The most unbelievable act for me was that only one hour after the show had ended, I'd edited the entire video in my car, in a parking garage near the venue, Jesse Hall. Out of all the projects I’ve done thus far, I’d say I’m finally starting to get the hang of the equipment and software.

We only had a few hours of sleep Wednesday night and were up very early working on the final version of the demonstration and a functional version of the web site. We had to check-in to our presentation group by 10:30 AM. Over the two-day event there are eight sessions consisting of five to seven teams per session who each have about five minutes to demonstrate their product and ten minutes to take questions.

Tuesday was a “free” day during which we worked on various aspects of the demonstration. It was also the evening of the Founder’s dinner, an event where the 40 “founders” had dinner with 40-50 angel and VC investors.

On the 2nd of March things were not looking promising. We were struggling with our software. Everyone was behind and some of the student team couldn’t take the pressure – or didn’t understand the importance. It was frustrating, Our demonstration was still rough and we had to do a lot of things to prepare unrelated to the core demo.

In the startup world your business/fellowship/work/ideas frequently take a completely unanticipated, turn. If you don’t like surprises, or more importantly, don’t know what to do with them, don’t do a startup. Six or eight weeks ago (seems like a year) I received a note from LAUNCH! headquarters saying that they had reviewed our application and wanted to schedule a first interview to learn about adFreeq.

Three weeks ago, we sent out a survey to 1500 Midwestern newsrooms with circulations between 50,000 and 100,000. So far, with nearly 80 responses, we’ve noticed one trend that I’d like to address: cost is the biggest barrier to using mobile phones in reporting.

The True/False Film Festival came to Columbia at the beginning of March. Sarah and I decided to use the many events as an opportunity to try out the cell phone reporting kit for the first time. Because we had just been trained this week, keeping the reporting as simple as possible was the first priority. Going out in the field any time, I prepare for the worst to happen; technology always seems to want to malfunction at the most inconvenient times. I was especially worried since even though I’ve had one training session, I did not have the opportunity to see what would cause confusion and ask how to fix those things.

Three minutes on an iPhone and Gary Symons, CEO of Vericorder, is well on his way to creating a full video package. Around the room, professors and students are a chorus of “That’s neat,” and “Cool!” and often, “Wait, what?”

Peter Meng, 2011-2012 fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri School of Journalism has developed a digital classified ad platform that incorporates social media to help newspapers win back classified advertising from other online sources. It is estimated that recent digital disruption of conventional classified advertising has cost traditional news organizations billions in lost revenues. Meng believes is platform will create a new, steady stream of revenue for news operations.

As expected Apple has again raised the bar for competitors in the tablet market that the late Steve Jobs defined with the iPad. It also will put more pressure on publishers to make their iPad editions more compelling and visually rich.

I'm now officially allowed to share with you that our little journalism startup called adFreeq was selected along with 25 other startups from around the world to present tomorrow at the LAUNCH! conference in San Francisco.

2011 was a big year for breaking news. Concurrently, it was yet another year of fewer resources, fewer journalists and smaller budgets. One potential way to cope with this is mobile journalism (MoJo).

Although industry professionals have been talking about MoJo for years, the current climate may be it’s time to break through in mainstream media. It gives greater freedom to newsrooms at every level; the technology is better, it’s more compact and often it’s affordable. Year by year, MoJo is granting more flexibility in the field of news.